Report on two Malta-flagged tankers seen as 'unfair'

Two ageing tankers registered in Malta, which has been black listed for safety, were set to ship more oil across European waters as Spain battled the slick left by the sunken tanker Prestige, Reuters said yesterday.

Quoting industry sources, the report said one of the ships, the 26-year old Byzantio, was recently detained for failing a port inspection and is on charter by Crown Resources, the Russian-owned company that chartered the Prestige.

The other tanker, the 22-year old Express, is set to follow exactly the same route as the doomed Prestige past the oil-covered coast of Northern Spain on its way from the Baltic Sea to Asia.

Both tankers, due to sail at the end of the month, are single-hulled, a design now meeting growing opposition from European leaders, Reuters said.

Malta Maritime Authority chairman Marc Bonello called the report unfair, saying Malta was working hard to improve maritime safety standards.

Malta's registry was recently placed on a safety "black list" by one of the world's leading port inspection authorities, the Paris Memorandum of Understanding. Within the black list, Malta is classed as "medium risk".

The fresh shipments come as a debate raged in Europe about whether to bring forward a ban on ageing single-hulled tankers.

In the wake of the Prestige ecological disaster, Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar and EU Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio called for a crackdown on unseaworthy ships.

Yesterday, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac agreed to push for stricter measures at the EU summit in Copenhagen next month.

The Byzantio has been chartered to carry 50,000 tons of heavy oil from the Estonian port of Talinn to an unspecified destination in Europe.

In August, she was detained for seven days in Dublin for various faults, including a lack of fire fighting equipment and deficient certificates for masters and officers.

The Express was booked by the US oil company Koch Industries to carry 80,000 tonnes of fuel oil from Talinn with an option to discharge in Asia.

The Japanese-built ship has been certified seaworthy by the American Bureau of Shipping, the same classification society that gave the Prestige a clean bill of health, records show.

Asked to comment on the Reuters report, Dr Bonello said it was unfair that the Maltese flag was being targeted every time there was an incident of this kind.

"Of course, we are alarmed by these incidents, which show that as long as ships sail the high seas there will always be risk. Our work is to minimise it."

He explained that Malta had been doing just that, working hard to put in place a series of measures to improve safety standards, with results already evident.

The Paris MOU detention rate of Malta-flagged ships had declined to nearly 7.5 per cent, lower than the average. The rate was comparable with some EU states and even lower than that of other members, he added.

He said it appeared the writer of the story was trying to say that Malta had risky ships on its register just because they were single hulled.

But the gradual phasing out programme for these ships had been agreed by the IMO and EU, and Malta supported it.

"All single-hulled tankers sailing in international waters are legal. Perhaps it was a normal reaction to the Prestige incident to call for the ban to be brought forward, but there were very good reasons behind the decision to phase them out gradually.

"Doing it otherwise would have created too big a demand for shipbuilding, and might have created problems with oil transportation. There were also economic considerations to do with the size of investment in new ships that would have been needed. And some of these ships are only eight to 10 years old."